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New Scientist Live

Masterworks in Petri dishes

Einstein in E. coli, an apple tree grown from fungi and a fluorescent Mario are just some of the masterworks cast in agar jelly by creative microbiologists, on display at www.microbialart.com

This flower-like image is the work of Eshel Ben-Jacob, a professor of physics at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Working with colleagues at the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at the University of California, San Diego, he wants to unravel what it is that makes bacteria so adept at survival by looking at pattern formation in complex dynamic systems alongside the molecular biology and biophysics of bacteria.

Ben-Jacob's work is artificially coloured, but the pattern is produced by the bacteria responding to stresses put upon them. For example, by limiting the food source, the colony can be made to reorganise itself into long tendrils, increasing its surface area to find more nutrients.

(Image: Eshel Ben-Jacob)

In this image, also by Ben-Jacob, you can see the narrow tentacles reaching out as the bacteria struggle to find nutrients.

In order to flourish in difficult living conditions the colony must adapt. This requires communication and cooperation from the individual microbes to organise the entire colony. Ben-Jacob's artistic endeavours are evidence of this organisation.

If scientists can understand how the bacteria work together, they might find new ways to outsmart them: by disrupting their communication mechanisms, for example.

(Image: Eshel Ben-Jacob)

This is another of Eshel Ben-Jacob's creations: he calls this one The Dragon. As well as starving his subjects to produce interesting shapes, he also exposes them to noxious chemicals.

For example, in response to the antibiotic Septrin, Paenibacillus dendritiformis biochemicals are secreted that instruct the individual microbes to come closer together. This increases the colony’s ability to dilute the antibiotic with a lubricating fluid.

Understanding how bacteria overcome antibiotics could help design more potent versions.

(Image: Eshel Ben-Jacob)

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London-based artist Erno-Erik Raitanen grows his art from the bacteria on his body. He takes a swab and then cultivates the collected bacteria on photographic film with a gelatin surface.

The bacteria eat the gelatin, producing shapes and colours as the chemicals in the film react. These degraded negatives are then developed in a darkroom, producing the effect seen here.

(Image: Erno-Erik Raitanen)

Hunter Cole of Loyola University Chicago produces "living drawings", made from several Petri dishes of bioluminescent bacteria.

She photographs them over a period of two weeks, capturing the various stages of their life cycle. The shapes morph into each other as the bacteria stop glowing brightly and start to dim and die.

(Image: Hunter Cole)

This is an image of Proteus mirabilis colonies from James Shapiro's research. Shapiro is a bacterial geneticist at the University of Chicago, interested in pattern formation during colony growth and "natural genetic engineering".

This is thought to occur when some organisms actively restructure their genomes in response to harsh environmental conditions.

They genetically engineered bacteria to express fluorescent proteins and carotenoid pigments to create works of art.

At the start of summer, the teams competing in iGEM are issued with a set of standard biological parts called BioBricks. They use these and their own bricks to invent new biological machines.

(Image: Team Osaka)

This bacterial “photo” was created by projecting light onto bacterial "film" – genetically engineered E. coli bacteria. The film was infused with a sugar that turns black when digested. The bacteria in the dark parts of the Petri dish digested this sugar and so turned black, whereas in the illuminated areas, a light-activated gene prevented the bacteria from eating the sugar, and so these parts remained clear.

Tabor now works at the University of California, San Francisco, where he continues to use light to engineer unnatural behaviours into colonies of bacteria.

(Image: Jeff Tabor and Matt Good)

Alexander Fleming is most famous for his discovery of penicillin in 1928 and for his subsequent Nobel prize. He was also one of the first people to discover the artistic potential of microbes. This is an example of one of his “germ paintings” using living bacteria.

(Image: Kevin Brown of the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum)

This image of an apple tree was created by Niall Hamilton, whose has a degree in microbiology but is now a medical doctor.

It was made by growing fungi and bacteria in agar jelly. Hamilton says he usually collects his materials from a window sill or takes a swab of the slime around sink plugholes.